Orlando Magic Blog

Group Blog talking about the NBA 2009 Eastern Conference Champions. Due to the amazing success of the 2009 playoff run comments are now frequently deleted to kill offensive comments, incoherence, or asininity. Comments can no longer be anonymous and require either a Blogger or OpenID account.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Who might the Magic play in the first round of the playoffs?

Going into FRI's action, the Magic, at 46-27, are virtually assured of finishing third in the East, as they are 5 games behind DET for second and 5 1/2 games ahead of CLE for third. Finishing third, the Magic would play the number six seed, which is currently PHI (37-35). Two other teams are in a tight battle with PHI for the number six seed, WAS (37-34) and TOR (36-35). Only one game sepearates the seventh seed, TOR, and the five seed, WAS.

Let's take a look at those teams' remaining schedules:

WAS (37-34, 5th East): 5 home games, 2 against over .500 teams (BOS, PHI) and 3 against under .500 teams (MIL, MIA, IND). 6 away games, 4 against over .500 teams (at LAL, at UT, at DET, at ORL) and 2 against under .500 teams (at SAC, at CHI). Projected finish: 6-5 (43-39).

PHI (37-35, 6th East): 5 home games, 3 against over .500 teams (PHO, DET, CLE) and 2 against under .500 teams (ATL, IND). 5 away games, 2 against over .500 teams (at CLE, at WAS) and 3 against under .500 teams (at NJ, at ATL, at CHA). Projected finish: 6-4 (43-39).

TOR (36-35, 7th East): 6 home games, 1 against an over .500 team (NO), and 5 against under .500 teams (NY, CHA, MIL, NJ, MIA). 5 away games, 1 against an over .500 team (at DET) and 4 against under .500 teams (at CHA, at ATL, at NJ, at CHI). Projected finish: 8-3 (44-38).

The Raptors have the easiest schedule of the three teams, which makes them the most likely to finish fifth and avoid the Magic in the first round. WAS and PHI could finish in a tie for sixth in my scenario. They play each other once more. PHI holds a 2-1 season edge over WAS.

I think all three teams are capable of winning a couple of games against the Magic in a playoff series. The Wizards may have Gilbert Arenas back, the Raptors already have Chris Bosh back, and the 76ers are one of the hottest teams in the NBA right now, so each team is dangerous in their own way. but I believe the Magic would win a seven game series against any one of those teams.

Should be an interesting finish.

posted by Mike from Illinois @ 9:40 PM  

3 Comments:

  • At 1:49 AM, Blogger Matt said…

    Thank you Mike for all your delightful contributions to the blog. Although I have been too busy to write any meaningful piece, I have enjoyed reading our blog as soon as I had a chance, considering that where I am having access to the Internet is not a given, day in and day out. I am planning to come home for a leave probably at the second round of play-offs, and I hope as Mike predicted, the Magic would be there.

    Where are Big Figure and OVERWADED? We need the faithful contributions of our brilliant core writers as we approach the play-offs. And of course there is no sign of WeRDevos, who started it all.

    Wish our contributors and faithful visitors all the best. GO MAGIC!!!

     

  • At 4:59 AM, Blogger Mike from Illinois said…

    Matt, always great hearing from you and thanks for the encouraging words! Look forward to hearing from you more when you make it back to Orlando.

    Wish we could hear more from OVERWADED, who only appears once every couple of weeks or so lately. I have no idea what happened to WeRDevos, who we haven't heard from since about the first week of the New Year. Big Figure, with all his basketball knowledge, is still around, and makes regular comments on here.

    Always great to read the opinions of the visitors to the blog, also.

    I'm trying my best to keep the blog interesting, informative, and worth reading. We always had a good mix of contributors in the two-plus years this blog has been up (again, thanks to WeRDevos and Matt for inviting me to be a contributor here), and we've had some really interesting debates. I'm the only one who creates posts now, but wouldn't mind if any of our other contributors would create a post at least once in a while. Echoing what Matt said, we do need the faithful contributions of our other writers as the playoffs approach.

    With the Magic having their best season in a dozen years and the playoffs coming up, interest in the team should continue to increase, especially from people who don't usually follow the Magic in the regular season.

    Hope everyone's alright, and like Matt said... GO MAGIC!!!

     

  • At 2:03 PM, Blogger Big Figure said…

    Matt glad to hear from you,hope everything is well on your side of the world right now. I also want to say thank you to matt and WeR for bringing me to this blog,and to mike for keeping us going with his usual pre-game/post game posts. With that said,i agree with you guys that we need to get back to what we do best and thats talk everything magic. I'll try and do my part to my best capabilities and hopefully we'll get our other regulars to come on more frequently. Ken,OW,WeR,tragic where you guys at?

     

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